You’ve probably seen the name Aram Moghaddassi popping up on LinkedIn lately, usually sandwiched between keywords like "DOGE" and "Social Security Administration." It’s a weird mix. On one hand, you have the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—Elon Musk’s high-octane project to trim the federal fat—and on the other, you have the massive, often slow-moving bureaucracy of the SSA.
Basically, Moghaddassi is one of the "Musk lieutenants." He’s a young engineer, a UC Berkeley grad with a background in applied math, who moved from building brain-machine interfaces at Neuralink to handling the sensitive data of millions of Americans. It's a massive jump.
The LinkedIn Profile and the DOGE Connection
If you look at Aram Moghaddassi's LinkedIn, it reads like a "who’s who" of the Musk universe. He spent time at Neuralink as an embedded systems engineer and was part of the Twitter transition team when Musk first took over X. But by early 2025, his trajectory shifted toward Washington D.C.
He wasn't just another consultant. Moghaddassi was positioned as a key technical architect for DOGE. His mission? To modernize the Social Security Administration’s aging IT infrastructure. Honestly, the goal sounded noble: cut down on fraud and make the "customer experience" at the SSA feel more like an Apple Store.
But things got messy fast.
The Cloud Server Controversy
By mid-2025, reports began to surface that things weren't going smoothly. Critics, and even some federal whistleblowers like Charles Borges (the SSA’s Chief Data Officer at the time), raised major red flags. The accusation was pretty staggering: DOGE engineers, including Moghaddassi, allegedly moved massive amounts of sensitive personal data—we’re talking Social Security numbers for over 300 million people—onto unsecured cloud servers.
The logic from the DOGE side was simple: they needed real-time copies of the data to build better fraud-detection tools. They felt the existing government safeguards were just "red tape" slowing down progress. Moghaddassi himself reportedly argued in memos that the "business needs" of the government outweighed some of these procedural risks.
Why This Matters for Your Privacy
It’s easy to get lost in the political back-and-forth, but the technical reality is what's scary. When you move 300 million records to a cloud environment designed to "evade regulatory oversight," you're creating a honey pot for hackers.
- Identity Theft: If that database were breached, it wouldn't just be a leak; it would be a total exposure of the American public.
- Access to Benefits: Fraudulent use of these numbers could lock people out of their own healthcare and food benefits.
- Lack of Audits: The SSA reportedly hadn't even set up proper monitoring for these new databases as late as June 2025.
Moghaddassi was eventually appointed as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the SSA in June 2025. He was the third DOGE-affiliated person to hold that spot in just six months. This rapid turnover in leadership is almost unheard of in federal agencies, and it’s why his LinkedIn updates are being watched so closely by tech experts and privacy advocates alike.
The Engineering Philosophy vs. Government Reality
Aram Moghaddassi represents a very specific Silicon Valley philosophy: "Move fast and break things." That works great when you’re building a social media app or a satellite. It’s a lot more complicated when you’re dealing with the lifeblood of American social safety nets.
He has defended the work, claiming that they are uncovering millions of fraudulent Social Security numbers that have been draining the system for years. The DOGE team claims they are the only ones with the technical "guts" to actually fix a system that has been broken since the 1970s.
What to Watch Next
If you’re following this story, keep an eye on the official reports from the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General. They are the ones currently looking into whether the data migration led by the DOGE team actually violated the Privacy Act of 1974.
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The "Apple Store" experience for Social Security sounds great on paper, but if the cost is the total exposure of your private data, many are asking if it’s a price worth paying.
Actionable Insights for Protecting Your Data:
- Monitor Your Credit: Since the SSA data move is still under scrutiny, now is the time to freeze your credit with the three major bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). It’s free and is the best way to prevent someone from opening accounts in your name.
- Check Your SSA Account: Log in to your "my Social Security" account on the official ssa.gov site. Ensure your contact information is correct and look for any weird activity in your earnings record.
- Watch for Phishing: With news of "government data moves" in the headlines, scammers will start calling or emailing pretending to be from the SSA or DOGE. Remember: the government will never call you out of the blue asking for your SSN or payment.